Coleman v. Billings

Citations

• 89 Ill. 183

Syllabus

<p>1. Acknowledgment—certificate under act of 1819. While the act of 1819 requires the officer taking the acknowledgment of deeds to examine the wife separate and apart from her husband, and to read or otherwise make known to her the full contents of the conveyance, and that she should declare that she voluntarily, and of her own free will and accord, sealed as her act and deed, and delivered the same, without any compulsion or coercion of her husband, it does not require that the officer taking the acknowledgment shall affirmatively show these facts in his certificate. It simply requires him to certify the acknowledgment, under his hand and seal, upon the back of the conveyance.</p> <p>2. Under the act of 1819 the officer taking the acknowledgment of a deed of a married woman is not required to show anything more than the declaration or acknowledgment of the wife that she had voluntarily executed the deed. The rule was changed by subsequent statutes.</p> <p>3. Contract—champertous. An agreement, whereby one agrees, at his own cost and expense, to recover and reinvest a claimant with the possession of land adversely occupied, and the claimant, in consideration thereof, undertakes, when that shall be done, to convey, by quitclaim, two-thirds of his interest to the other, is champertous and void, and such other person is not a necessary party to a suit by the claimant for partition of the land.</p> <p>4. Possession—of part under deed, extends to whole trad conveyed. A party who enters into possession of land under a conveyance, though from a person having no title, is presumed to have entered according to the description in the deed, and his occupancy of a part., claiming the whole, is construed as a possession of the entire tract, where there is no actual adverse possession of the part not so occupied by him.</p> <p>5. Same—actual residence not necessary. Actual residence, either by the party claiming land or by a tenant., is not indispensable to continued possession